As I was sitting in my vehicle, doing a surveillance back in February, the strangest thing happened. It was brutally cold, and it was the middle of the night on a quiet block in Belle Harbor in Queens. It was so quiet that you could almost hear the rats shiver. But then I noticed a ringing in my left ear. Now we all get that sensation of a ringing sound, and then it goes away. I went to enough loud concerts as a teen to know that it happens and then goes away. Same thing when I’m at the indoor gun range. There’s always that guy who shows up with a friggin ‘ouzi and I can still hear it through ear plugs and exterior ear protection. Who brings a big gun to an indoor range anyway? Anything that big should not be at an indoor range. Wait until the Spring, as I do with my AR15, but it still happens. But I digress. What I am getting at is that’s what happens when you overdo it in a loud space. Your ears ring a little, and then it goes away.
Only this time, the ringing did not go away. At first, I thought it was because my ears needed to be cleaned. So I went to the nearest drug store, bought the drops, and had my wife put them in my ears a few times each night until they were as clean as the day I was born. But still, the ringing persisted. I finally went to the doctor (who commented on how clean my ears were, thank you very much), and he said that I had liquid in my inner ear and to take some medicine. After two weeks, the medicine was done, but the ringing continued. I eventually went to an ENT who ran all kinds of tests only to tell me that I had Tinnitus (which I already knew) and to come back in a year.
My wife (the OSINT expert) got to work doing research, and while we tried some of the things that were suggested, they did not do much. I tried everything from meditation and mindfulness techniques to listening to cricket noises (which helped slightly but annoyed my dog to no end, which on a selfish level amused me) to a hearing aid. Nothing did much, if anything at all, to stop the persistent ringing. I wasn’t hard of hearing; I just had a tiny high-pitched sound in my left ear all the time. I could still hear everything just fine, but that annoying sound never went away – like my mother when she wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do. And like my mother, I just tried to ignore it and pretend it isn’t there – but it still is, and it was annoying and won’t stop.
This made me think of some of the cases that I’ve had over the years, especially the missing persons’ cases. These people come to me because of someone they were close to a long time ago when they lived in Rockaway Beach, Queens, and even though they try their best to forget about them, they are still always there, in the back of their minds. Something will happen – a song on the radio, someone wearing the same perfume or cologne walking by, or maybe looking at the sunset by Rockaway Park will bring that memory rushing back. Always bothering them and trying as they may, they cannot seem to do anything to make that thought go away. So they finally give up and come to a professional for help – a private investigator, in this case, to try and find that lost love. To make the “nagging feeling” go away by finding an answer one way or another. Sort of how I keep trying to figure out what to do about this nagging Tinnitus. I keep thinking that if I try enough things, it will eventually work.
Same with the situation that came up in my office not too long ago. I had a call from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn from a person that was looking for someone they met by chance at a bus stop. The guy was really cute and asked the woman out. She instinctively said no, that she had to get home. She got on the bus, and he waved as it pulled away. She’d been kicking herself ever since. It nagged at her day and night until she called me to help her. “It could have been my destiny,” she told me. Being a New Yorker since birth, I was thinking more along the lines of “or a serial killer,” but that’s just me and my glass half empty because someone spilled it out mentality. I had to tell her that the chance of finding someone when all I had was the first name and “he was cute” to go on was impossible even for me. I suggested she put up some posters in the area and hope for the best.
That is sort of where I’m at in this scenario. I hope for the best and listen to crickets in my Bluetooth earpiece when I’m not using it for phone calls and hope that something will come along to cure this annoying situation. My wife has a list of things that she’s seen on the internet to try (and we all know that everything on the internet MUST be true, right?), and one by one, I check them out, only to be once again disappointed – just like the woman at the bus stop. She goes to that stop all the time now, waiting for her prince charming to show up, only to be disappointed. For her sake, I hope she does see him again. Who knows? Maybe he is a famous Tinnitus expert and we can both have a happy ending.
Investigreat, LLC is a recognized full service Private Investigation Agency that is fully licensed, insured and bonded, handling cases all over Connecticut as well as Queens NY, Brooklyn NY, Bronx NY, New York City, Staten Island and Long Island NY. Adam, along with his wife Terri, have been working cases for Legal Teams, Insurance Companies, Private Businesses, Municipalities, School Systems and general investigation services for the public since 1992.
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